Ladybug Daydreams

birthday

One Decade

Posted by Wendy on October 25, 2013 Leave a Comment

That’s how long I’ve been a mom.

Or, that’s how old Seahawk is. Yeah. That makes me sound less old ;).

We had a big week of celebrations. On Sunday, we had the two older boys’ joint “friend” party. We bought white t-shirts from Gen-X and a package of fabric markers and each kid got to decorate their own shirt. Seahawk did his up like a jersey of his favorite football player, Russell Wilson of the Seattle Seahawks (hence his blog name). Munchkin did a space scene. When they were wearing their shirts the next day, I took the opportunity during our daily trek to the store to teach them the planets in order. I learned them in third grade, and to this day I still use the mnemonic device my teacher taught us: My Very Elegant Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Pizzas (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto). Yes, I know Pluto isn’t technically considered a planet anymore, but it completes the funny phrase nicely :).

Anyway, after the shirt coloring, the kids went outside to play (yay for beautiful weather in late October!). Then I called them back in to do “build your own pizzas.” I made pizza crust, tripling my normal recipe, and divided it into mini-pizza size portions. We put various toppings into bowls and kids got to choose what they wanted. Then we baked them up and served them for dinner (the party ran from 4-6). Overall, a very successful party! Except for the fact that I didn’t take any pictures. That was a tragedy.

On Monday, we had Seahawk’s “grandparents dinner.” He chose baked ziti, which works for me, because it’s easy to make a big pan of that! In lieu of gifts, he asked everyone for a cash donation to put toward his “basketball fund.” He’s never played a team sport (they’re expensive around here!) and really wanted to. Between everyone, he got what he needed, plus a pair of shoes specifically for the gym. I can’t wait to start going to his games next month!

Then on his real birthday, yesterday, I made tamales for dinner – that’s another of his favorites, but we don’t have it very often because they’re very time consuming to make. Because we’d had cake (homemade pumpkin cake – yum!) at the grandparents dinner, I just bought him a doughnut from the grocery store for his real birthday. It’s all about portion control, and one doughnut won’t stick around for days ;). We put ten candles in it for him (which hubby thought was about the funniest thing he’d ever seen – I didn’t tell him in advance I was going to do that) and sang the traditional song. And that was that.

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How do you celebrate birthdays?

Posted in: Other, parenting | Tagged: birthday

Fourth

Posted by Wendy on September 15, 2013 2 Comments

Last week we celebrated the fourth birthday in our family. It belonged to Munchkin. He turned 7. Seven!! Where does the time go??? I think my favorite quote of the day from him was, “I’ve been waiting to turn 7 forever! Now I don’t have to anymore!” What a funny kid.

We’re trying something different party-wise with our kids this year. In the past, we’ve done a party for each of them, inviting mostly inviting their grandparents and aunts/uncles/cousins. Last year, we had a joint party for them following the same model. This year, they have more friends than they’ve ever had before. The girl who lives next door is really sweet to them (she’s 12 and in 7th grade at public school) and there’s another homeschool family just around the corner that our kids have grown attached to. They have a girl right between Seahawk and Munchkin (age wise) and a preschool age boy. Plus, there are now around 20 or 30 kids at church, whereas before, my boys were the only two (this was before Small Fry was born). 

So what we’re doing is having a special grandparents only birthday dinner on or near the actual birthday for each of them independently, and between the two birthdays, a joint party for friends. For personal reasons, we opted not to go out of our way to reach out to the aunts and uncles.

Munchkin chose pizza for his grandparents dinner. This was a-okay with me! I like cooking for people, but it was pretty hot last week, so take and bake was just right. We had a lovely time celebrating a special guy with (most of) his grandparents, as well as the lady who lives across the street from us and has become a grandmother-type figure for the boys. She loves them and they love her – a good portion of the time, they’d rather hang out with her than other friends! So it was wholly appropriate to include her in the “grandparents dinner.”

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’d go over my birth experience with Munchkin when his birthday came around, so I’ll go ahead and do that. But  no worries – I won’t get too graphic.

He was born on a Wednesday, the same day I had a regular checkup. I woke up that morning and knew something was wrong. This was around 7. I was worried, but my doctor’s appointment was at 9-ish anyway, so I didn’t call or try to go in early. They put me on a non-stress test which came back “not perfect,” so my doctor decided to induce. I didn’t get to go home from that doctor’s visit. The doctor’s office is just on one wing of the hospital, so they admitted me right from the clinic and we went straight to The Birth Center.

Labor was progressing normally for the first four to six hours. Around that time, we (by “we” I mean the medical staff) noticed that the baby wasn’t handling the contractions very well. His heart was doing funny things with each one, but it settled out when the contractions ended. They started tossing out the idea of a c-section at that point. I was devastated. I’d never in a million years considered that I’d end up with one. I have to hand it to my doctor – she did seem hesitant about doing the surgery, especially with my disappointment at the forefront. So we rode out the labor a little longer. I got an epidural, and we kept going, waiting for the baby to come. At 7:30 p.m., I had a contraction. My doctor happened to be in the room for this one, and the fetal heart monitor went crazy. Baby’s heart rate dropped down to 30. 30! That’s too slow to be healthy even in an adult, much less so in an infant. So she hollered at the nurses to prep the OR and call in the surgeon (he’d left not long before and was about 10-15 minutes away). 

My baby was born via emergency c-section at 7:55 p.m.

He’s had a whole slew of health issues (brain surgery when he was 3, a correction to some scar tissue in his boy parts when he was 4, and ear tubes when he was 5), but now he’s just perfect. And health problems or not, I wouldn’t take him any other way.

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Posted in: parenting | Tagged: birthday, motherhood

Happy Birthday, Small Fry

Posted by Wendy on July 12, 2013 6 Comments

That’s right: my baby is 1! So instead of the normal Picture of the Week, I’m going to share a photo essay of his first year. Some of the pictures you’ve seen before, some you haven’t. Enjoy :).

Have a wonderful weekend. Mine will be full of cake baking and decorating and a party :).

–Wendy

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Posted in: Other, parenting, picture of the week | Tagged: baby, birthday, pictures

Another Birthday

Posted by Wendy on July 8, 2013 2 Comments

Some friends of ours have a baby just one week older than Small Fry, and his birthday party was on Saturday. I didn’t think I’d be able to go to the party because hubby had to sell books that day, but Friday night, our neighbor (who was also invited – these friends are also the previous tenants of our house, so they were friends with the neighbor too) said she’d drive us over. I didn’t think through until Saturday morning that this meant we should bring a gift. So I spent the bulk of Saturday making a quilt.

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Thank goodness for fabric scraps! The party was at 5:30 and I finished the quilt around 4:00. everyone was super impressed that I’d made it in one day. Which wasn’t why I did it, but still nice all the same :).

I hope you had a wonderful weekend as well.

–Wendy

Posted in: quilting/sewing | Tagged: birthday, gift, pinwheel, quilt

Picture of the Week: Happy Birthday Hubs

Posted by Wendy on July 5, 2013 2 Comments

As I mentioned on Wednesday, today is my hubby’s birthday. The two days of us being the same age are over, and he’s a year ahead of me again. In honor of his birthday, I thought I’d share one of his comics.

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As Mom to three boys, I often feel this way! Both in the “quit shooting your brother” way and the “I don’t know anything” (about the way the play) way. Lol!

If you’re interested in reading more comics, click here to read some of the older ones online. You can also buy the book securely online here. Or the other book from Amazon. I’m not sure why he has one book on Amazon and not the other. *shrug*

I hope you all had a wonderful Independence Day! Have a great weekend.

–Wendy

Posted in: picture of the week | Tagged: birthday, casey and kyle comics, comics, will robertson

Welcome!

Welcome to Ladybug Daydreams! My name is Wendy, and I’m glad you’re here. I am a homeschooling mom to 5 boys. I write about homeschooling, homeschool curriculum, yarn (both knitting and crochet), and more! I hope you enjoy what you read.

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